A painting contractor told me dark colored exterior paint can bubble

and the solution is to have primer that is tinted to match the paint color. I am aware that lots of direct sun can cause darker colors to bubble soon after they have been painted, but this guy was talking about something else.

He says:
Any dark latex or oil paint will bubble if the primer underneath isn't tinted darker.

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A painting contractor told me dark colored exterior paint can bubble

Quote:

Originally Posted by skiposwald

He says:
Any dark latex or oil paint will bubble if the primer underneath isn't tinted darker.

Does he know what he is talking about?

If that is what he said then he is just doing what I have seen a lot of "Painters" do and make crap up as they go. Reminds me of one guy I painted with that would insist that cleaning your hands and tool was always quicker with cold water.

If a paint is going to cause bubbling, it is more from the paint shrinking while it dries and pulling on the bottom layers than it is from the temperature difference is colors of paint.

A painting contractor told me dark colored exterior paint can bubble

The problem with making stuff up as you go is that a lot of the time you are wrong. I was reading on another forum where one guy said that paint bubbling on a house was due to no vapor barrior on the inside and the vapor pushing through the wood. Paint will bubble. There isn't a whole lot you can do about it to stop it. Sure it is more likely to happen in the sun, but I have seen it happen plenty on the shady side of the house. Oil based primer can sometimes help but it can cause bubbling too.

Paint is probably the least understood, or most misunderstood, technology in the entire home center. The problem is that unlike carpentry, wiring or plumbing, paint and painting isn't actually taught anywhere. People learn the trade from those in the business just like coopers, millers, milliners, barbers and smiths have for centuries.

The problem is that paint has changed an awful lot in the past few hundred years, but the way people learn how to become painters hasn't. The result has been that there's a lack of reliable information about paint and painting in the trade and an information vaccuum is fertile ground for misconceptions and misinformation to grow and spread. Some of it just spread to you.

The printing press created an explosion in the exchange of knowledge and ideas in Europe during the middle ages. The Gutenburg Museum in the town of Mainz, Germany has artifacts dating back to the earliest days of printing. Back then, printing resembled the use of a rubber stamp. A drawing was carved in relief on a block of wood, and that "wood cut" (as it was called) was used very much like today's rubber stamps to print the carved image on a piece of paper.

One of those wood cuts shows an improved way of fetching water from a well. It shows the traditional method with a bucket tied to the end of a rope, but instead of the other end of the rope being tied to the crank, this wood cut shows the rope wrapped several times around the crank and the end then tied to ANOTHER bucket! At a time when only nobility, the very rich and the clergy could afford time away from work to learn to read and write, and when crossing a river meant encountering people who spoke a totally different language, printed words or books were of little use to the average man. Printing back then consisted of illustrations. In the case of the water fetching idea, anyone seeing the print immediately understood the idea... friction between the rope and the crank played the central role in raising and lowering the buckets, and more water could be fetched faster and more easily because the weight of the empty bucket helped crank the full one up. A man didn't need to know how to read to fully grasp the concept.

Another such woodcut shows a blacksmith's bellows being used to squirt water into the window of a burning house. Back then there was no such thing as a fire department or fire insurance, so having your house catch fire was very much like having your life savings catch fire.

Lots has changed in 700 years, but people haven't changed at all. We're still using the latest technology available to overcome barriers to communication so that we can share our ideas with other people having similar interests. That almost certainly illiterate German who reached into his pocket 700 years ago for silver to have his bucket idea carved would have very much in common with the people on this website.

And, hopefully, just like the printing press, todays internet will create a similar explosion in the exchange of knowledge and ideas so that misconceptions and misinformation like "dark paints blister unless you tint the primer" will die out and be replaced with knowledge and understanding.

A painting contractor told me dark colored exterior paint can bubble

Quote:

Originally Posted by skiposwald

Any dark latex or oil paint will bubble if the primer underneath isn't tinted darker.

Does he know what he is talking about?

The only thing I can think of is perhaps you misunderstood (or he misunderstood and then told you sideways). Painting a surface that is too hot (and dark surfaces will be hotter in theory) will cause bubbling. That is the only thing I can think of he may be getting at. Or he is totally full of crap.